The Chartered (Dutch) West India Company - GWC, was a company of merchants. It was granted a for a
trade monopoly in the West Indies (meaning the Caribbean) and North America. During the 17th
century, traders established trade posts and plantations throughout the Americas; actual
colonization, with Dutch settling in the new lands was not as common as with settlements of other
European nations. Many of the Dutch settlements were lost or abandoned by the end of that century,
but the Netherlands managed to retain possession of Suriname until it gained independence in 1975,
as well as the Netherlands Antilles and Aruba, which remain within the Kingdom of the Netherlands
today.

Famous VOC.
The first Multinational.
The Dutch East India Company (VOC) was founded on March 20, 1602. Ships sailed to Asia from
Amsterdam, Delft, Enkhuizen, Hoorn, Middelburg and Rotterdam in order to conduct trade. The Dutch
economy grew rapidly as a result. This trading company grew between 1602 and 1799 into one of the
first true multinationals of the world.

Click VOC-map for an enlargment.

This page is in honour of 400 years
relationship between the Netherlands and the USA.

The -Golden Age- was a period in Dutch history in which Dutch trade
science, and art
were among the most acclaimed in the world. During a large part of the 17th century, 1602 - 1672,
the Dutch, traditionally able seafarers and keen mapmakers, dominated world trade.
See the first map of New Netherland -in latin: Nova Belgica->>Click to read: A brief outline of Dutch History and the Province of New Netherland.

Fifteen streets or so, depending on how you
count them: that was the capital of the Dutch colony of New Netherland. At its southern end,
Manhattan Island tapered to a smoothed point, rather like a sock, with the toes sticking out toward
the harbor.
Once the decision was made to make it the capital, other features of the town fell into place. The
position of the fort at the end of the island naturally meant that the town would develop around it,
the streets radiating northward from it and from the East River frontage. The presence of a small
inlet cutting through the developing grid didnâ€™t deter the inhabitants. They decided it was a
â€œgrachtâ€â€”a canalâ€”and built pretty little bridges over it, as in
Holland.

For
most of its life, New Amsterdam had fewer than 1,000 residents, but its influence would far outstrip
its size. This was the first and most important multicultural base in colonial America. While Boston
and, later, Philadelphia, developed along distinctly English lines, New Amsterdam was pluralistic
from the beginning. In 1643, when barely 500 people called it home, director Willem Kieft told a
visiting Jesuit priest that 18 languages were spoken. In fact, according to some estimates this
â€œDutchâ€ city was never more than 50 percent Dutch in its population.
The other major groups included Germans, English, Africans, Scandinavians, French,
and Jewish. From this tiny mix of peoples would come the structure of New York City.
The remarkable thing about visiting this part of lower Manhattan today is that, because the street
pattern has largely been retained, you can actually get a feeling of walking around New Amsterdam.

MANHATTAN.
Indians knew of it long before any Europeans arrived. The Mohawk called it Ganono, meaning 'reeds',
no doubt because of the reedy marshes that surrounded much of it.
But the Delaware nameâ€”variously recorded as Manados, Manahata, Manahtoes, Manhattosâ€”is the one
that stuck. It meant 'island' or 'hilly island'.
The Dutch settlers picked up the name and used it. And the rest is history.

LONG ISLAND, Lange Eylandt in Dutch.
Place names tell the story of Long Island in the history of New Netherland. In the west you find
names (with an occasional spelling change) that come straight from the Dutch: Nassau,
Heemstede--Hempstead--, New Utrecht, Amersfoort--Flatland--, Vlissingen--Flushing-- and of course
Breuckelen--Brooklyn--.

The Province of
the Dutch Republic:

New
Netherland
1609 - 1664

The saying 'Yankee' came
from the Dutch boys name:
'Jan-Kees'

The
eastern end of the islandâ€”North Fork, South Fork, Southampton, Suffolkâ€”is Old England.
The island, 1,400 square miles of woodland, bay and beach, a rich microcosm of the continent it lay
astride, became the principal battleground between the Dutch of New Netherlandt and the English of
New England as they struggled for control of the Eastern Seaboard of North America.

How
it began.

d' Halve Maen --->

An
Englishman named Henry Hudson, was already a famous explorer. He made four voyages between 1607 and
1610 searching for a northern passage to the East Indies and China. Three of them were on behalf of
English trading companies, and on all three of these trips Hudson confined himself to the frozen
reaches near the Arctic Circle, failing every time to find a route through the ice that would lead
to the tropical climes and exotic goods of Asia. His second voyage in 1608 via the northeastern
route failed after which his patrons deserted him. When the Dutch consul in London, Van Meteren, got
wind of this predicament --knowing some Amsterdam merchants were still interested in the northern
passage-- he referred Hudson to them. In 1609 he was hired by the Chartered (Dutch) West India
Company - GWC -
to find a Northeast, all-water route to Asia.
The GWC, a group of merchants, chartered the ship Half Moon (d' Halve Maen), which was commissioned
on March 25,1609, for the Dutch East India Company - VOC. She was a ship of exploration and the
spaceship of her age, designed to take a crew of 20 into unknown and unchartered waters. Hudson
sailed from Amsterdam on April 4, 1609. Captain Hudson's third voyage led to the founding by the
Dutch of the first European settlements in the present states of Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey,
New York and

Pennsylvania,
in the time named New Netherland. Only a month out of port, Hudson and his Dutch/English crew
were disheartened after their passage north of Norway was blocked by Arctic ice floe. Many talked of
mutiny. Sitting in his cabin, the oncerned captain considered his dilemma and options. A compromise
was made. The course was changed and what was a search for the Northeast passage became a
transatlantic crossing to search for a Northwest passage to the rich spice trade of China. Some
think that Hudson's intention all along was to go Northwest. Hudson reached Nova Scotia on July
18,1609. After
reaching the Maine coast and replacing a foremast lost in rough seas, the Half Moon sailed south
as far as present day North Carolina. Then Hudson turned the ship northward and explored the
Delaware Bay, but he determined that was not a possible passageway. He continued northward and
arrived at the mouth of a wide river. Could this be a passage to the Pacific Ocean?
Hudson stopped at points on the New Jersey coast and traded peacefully with Algonquian
Indians.
However, on September 5,1609 an exploration party in the ship's boat was attacked by Indians,
and John Coleman, an English crew member, was killed by an arrow in his neck. He was buried on
September 7,1609 in a spot on Sandy Hook called Coleman's Point. On September 11,1609 the Half
Moon entered New York Harbor and began sailing up the river that today bears the captain's
name the
Hudson River. But it was soon obvious that it was an inland river, not a westward passage. Hudson
arrived in present-day Albany on September 19,1609. This was as far as the Half Moon could go
without running aground. In making his trip up the river, Hudson claimed the area for the
Dutch and
opened the land for settlers who followed. Beginning in a remarkably short time following
Hudsonâ€™s
voyage, Dutch traders were on the scene. His voyage, which came 10 years before the Pilgrims
landed at Plymouth Rock, led to the establishment, in 1614, of the Dutch trading post Fort
Nassau in
Beverwijck, at present day Albany. The first European settlements in Connecticut, Delaware,
New
Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania were built by the Dutch beginning in 1624. Brooklyn,
Hoboken,
Block Island and hundreds more places take their names from the first Dutch colonists.

New
Amsterdam.

The
Hudson River extended northward to the Mohawk River Valley, which then tended west into the Great
Lakes. With the Hudson, therefore, the Dutch controlled the only known route to the west south of
the St.Lawrence river, which the French maintained.
This natural advantage would give the island at the mouth of the river - Manhattan - a
location that would make it the centerpiece of one of the world's great commercial cities. New
Amsterdam, an outpost of the Dutch West India Company -GWC-, was the teeming frontier enterprise
with a multi-ethnic face that provided the foundation for the wide-open, ethnically diverse,
cosmopolitan culture for which New York City has always been revered around the world. It is an
ancestry that stands in distinct contrast to that of the closed theocratic communities of New
England who occupy center stage in the folklore of America's founding.

Peter
Stuyvesant.

In 1664,
English troops under the command of the Duke of York and Albany (later James II of England) attacked
the New Netherland colony. Being greatly outnumbered, Director-General Peter Stuyvesant surrendered
New Amsterdam, with Fort Orange following soon. New Amsterdam was renamed New York (from James's
English title: York). Fort Orange was renamed Fort Albany (from James's Scottish title).The loss of
the New Netherland province led to the Second Anglo-Dutch War during 1665-1667. This conflict ended
with the Treaty of Breda in which the Dutch gave up their claim to New Netherland in exchange for
Suriname.

The VOC-shipHalve Maen

How
it ended.

The
Chartered (Dutch) West India Company --GWC-- was organized similarly to the Dutch East India Company
(Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, abbreviated as VOC), which had a trade monopoly
for Asia (mainly present
Indonesia) from 1602, except for the fact that the GWC was not allowed to conduct military
operations without
approval of the Dutch government. Like the VOC, the company had five offices, called chambers.
From 1621 it was granted a charter for a trade monopoly in New Netherland by the Republic of the
Seven United Netherlands and given jurisdiction over the African slave trade, Brazil, the Caribbean
and North America. After years of debts, the loss of New Holland in Brazil to the Portugees in 1654
and New Netherland to the English in 1664, the original GWC folded in 1674, and a new, reorganised
company was formed. Piracy was abandoned,
and the company concentrated mainly on the African slave trade and its remaining possessions in
Suriname and the Antilles. After the British took control of Suriname for several years in the
1780s, the GWC appeared unable to recover. In 1791, the company's stock was bought by the Dutch
government, and its territories were placed under Dutch government control.

The
Dutch East India Company -VOC- remained a trading operation, powerful and violent indeed but
ultimately a business that operated along the coasts of Africa and the archipelago of Southeast Asia
and Indonesia. The Dutch East India Company became the world's biggest enterprise during the 17th
and 18th centuries.